The Cochrane High School senior varsity girls’ volleyball team crushed the competition last weekend in Calgary – locking down the gold and only losing one set over the course of the entire tournament.
“The chemistry was really good this weekend,” said coach Esther Sieben. “We have some thinkers out there who think about how they’re going to win.”
The tournament – the second of the season – took place at University of Calgary’s Jack Simpson Gym and pitted the SV Cobras against a batch of big 4A high schools from across the city and region.
“There were a lot of big, tall teams that we just came out on top of,” said Sieben. “They were very focused and they knew exactly what they needed to do. It was almost surreal the way they played. It was really nice as a coach to see that.”
The team is made up mostly of teens from Grade 11, with five Grade 12 girls rounding out the roster. Sieben said she’s not only proud of how the squad played when things were going right – but how they managed when things didn’t go their way, too.
“Being able to shake off a bad play or a bad point and moving on; just having them focus on one contact of the volleyball to the next,” she explained. “That’s such a nice attribute to have in such a young team.”
As for that pesky lost set, it was the second one in the final match against Calgary’s Western Canada High School.
“Everything else we were the first ones to 25,” said Sieben. “It was a true team effort and they just all came together and played hard.”
The junior varsity girls also took the court last weekend and took down some daunting diggers themselves – including EP Scarlett High School – to snag the bronze medal in their division.
The senior girls will now take a couple of weeks off before heading to Kelowna, B.C., for the 80-team Best of the West Volleyball Championships from Oct. 13 to 15. The following weekend takes them to Edmonton to face another round of heavy hitters at a tournament hosted by Strathcona High School.
Although teams take it day-by-day and play-by-play, the provincial championships in Canmore on Nov. 23 and 24 are also on the horizon, and Sieben can’t help thinking – even a little bit – about making to the big show.
“That’s every rural school’s dream,” she said. “It’s the beginning of the season and we just see a lot of potential and a lot of hope for a good season.”
